138 ON AND OFF THE A VENUE Î '0 __ ' D f' .. ;""" ' : '".;. · · .. ..r ". . ., o :':! H AVING for a good many years turned out what I am assured by indulgent friends are adequate meals on an anCIent gas range that has to be manually lighted and whose oven-tem- perature control is erratic, to Sd.Y the least, I am perhaps not the person to ex- pound the marvels of modern science as they are applied to the gas ranges of to- dd.Y Still, if some allowance IS made for the impressionable enthusiasm of one brought too abruptly into contact with progress, thIs report on what is newest and most spectacular in kitchen <;toves (gas stoves, that IS) mar be of service to cooks who, like me, have lagged behind in such matters. Knowing from former researches into the subject that, for some reason that eludes me, the people who sell gas ranges will show them being put through theIr paces only in spots remote from Manhattan, I was not overly dis- ABOUT THE HOUSE mayed to learn that witnessing a per- formance of the newest model of the Caloric stove would in vol ve a trip across the Hudson River. To all (or almost all) appearances, this year's magnificent Caloric model, whIch I watched in ac- tion at the demonstration kitchen of the Public Service Electric & Gas Co , in Newark, is like last year's magnifi- cent Caloric model, being the same thirty- ix inches high, forty inches wide, and twenty-four inches deep, in all its impressive shiny porcelain finish. Once you start cooking, though (or watch the presiding Caloric high priestess start cooking for you), you will find a world of difference, for the latest manifesta- tion ]s equipped with an improvement that last year's stoves wotted not of. In f " "" 11 " I d act, Improvement IS a too ml d word for what's going on in the ovens of today, where, thanks to a recently perfected system of controlling oven temperature, a wholly new concept of meal preparation has been achieved. As every cooking housewife knows, it has not heretofore been possible to bring the heat In an oven down below 250 0 , so it IS real news that the temperature can now be lowered to as little as 140 0 , at which figure the cooking process ends but the food stays hot without drYIng out. This virtue, combined with an automatic oven-clock control, makes the absentee cook d reality, and not just a figment of some Madison Avenue copy- writer's imagination. Perhaps, though, I had better report on \vhat I know of the new low-temperature ovens before I start looking for social implications that may (who can say?) be comparable to those of the industrial revolution. Well, when I got to the Caloric show-a bit late, oWIng to complications of travel- I was greeted pleasantl) and served with a portion of tender chicken that had been roasted à point for forty-five min- utes at the usual oven heat ànd had then been kept hot and ready to serve by the new automatic timing apparatus, which lowered the oven temperature to 140 0 as soon as the chicken was cool{ed. I was told that the fowl could have remained at that temperature for as much as three hours without an) impaIrment of its succu- lence. Later, and elsewhere, I sampled a beefsteak offered by the obliging owner of a Roper range that was equipped with the same low-tempera- ture oven con trol. To instruct me in w ha t the new device can accom- plish, this uncommonly cûÖperative lady had risen at seven-thirty, broiled a bee fsteak to the right rareness inside a well-browned crust, and then put it, uncov- ered, In the low-tem- perature oven to await m) arrival at ten-thirty, at which time the steak was in exactly the same state-well-browned on the outside and rare within. Furthermore, this up-to-date absentee practitioner can, she told me, put a seven- pound standing rib roast of beef in a cold Roper oven at nine 0' clock in the morning and -come home late in ( ((The reason our dividends won't take us (ftytng down to Rio' is that we don't have any dividends. We're tn growth stocks."